Mountains Into Dust
by TheManWithAPlan
Summary: All war is deception.


_Each of you is so amazing, and so special. And I'm... not. I'm just the guy in the group who's... __**regular**__._

**...**

_"I say what happened, then you say what happened, and then I decide who's __**right**__. That's why we call it justice. Because it's 'just us'!"_

**…**

"_I always wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, but now that I see you, I think I understand. There's just nothing inside you, nothing at all. You're pathetic and sad and __**empty**__."_

**…**

"_No. I'm not gonna __**end**__ it like this."_

**…**

One stares out across the wasteland, at the blizzard raging outside in the middle of summer, while the other stares into the roaring fire.

The old man is looking for something out in the storm. He looks for the shining city so long denied him, a city of ivory towers, of white trees, smiling faces, and streets paved with gold. A city without monsters. A city without him. He will not find it. The bleak greys will remain so. His war is not so easily surrendered.

The old man moves away from the window and back towards the fireplace. His movements are slow and deliberate. Stones sliding together. His voice is hard and low. A mountain being ground into dust.

"What is it you want, Long?"

At first, the archer is silent.

The blizzard rages outside. The haunting moan of the screaming gales echo through empty halls, punctuated only by the _tap tap tap_ of hail hitting glass.

The archer takes another swig from his flask, wincing as the brackish mix burns the throat and migrates downward, a hot coal slowly settling at the bottom of his stomach. For what seems like eternity, the young man turned old stares into the roaring fire, and drinks from a rusty canteen that smells of cheap sake.

The old man understands. A question so common in everyday life, so common that normal people give canned, often times inaccurate responses to it, yet something just too alien for the either of them to answer. It requires a great deal of thought and introspection that wasn't there before. That wasn't _needed_ before.

Finally, the archer looks up from his drink and despair to give the old man a single look. A look the old man has seen before, on vengeful men, on desperate men, on men teetering on the edge of oblivion. The old man does not like it, but who is he to judge?

There are no words. There are no words needed. The old man glances to the archer's arm, or lack thereof, and he understands. The archer lost more than a limb. He lost his way. He lost his purpose. He lost everything that made him not just _an _archer, but _the _archer. And still he would have recovered. The old man is sure of it. Take his arm and take his city, take his friends and take his reason to fight and still he would have crawled back up.

But they broke his bow. For the sin of defiance, they broke the one piece of him that still tied him to humanity.

The archer wants what he believes is his. He is beyond mercy or motive or mission. He wants retribution, in whatever way he can get it.

The archer's gaze is of the smouldering fury, of the newborn blade still glowing red hot from the forge. It is of a rage that stills the mind and turns the world a blinding red. He has fallen into madness like all the rest. They all walked the line, carefully balanced upon it for years, until the world saw fit to hurl them off the edge.

It unsettles the old man. The greatest threat to every plan is always in the realm of the unpredictable. Volatile is just another name for unpredictable. There is nothing so volatile as a man with nothing left to lose. The archer has lost everything and more.

But despite his misgivings, the old man cannot refuse him.

**...**

The girl rides her ostrich horse with a glee that reminds the old man of Jee. How beneath that tough exterior, a facade meant to keep everything at a distance, she had a soft spot for animals. How she would spending hours playing with the eel hounds whenever she thought he was away. How the animals made her happy, truly happy, and how the old man would watch and tell himself that he had saved her.

It's why the old man kept the ranch. Partly to occupy himself across the long years of atrophy, and partly in remembrance to his student. To his soldier. To his failure.

And that is the world for a few minutes. Nothing but a mentor and his protege, one teaching the other how to properly ride an ostrich horse.

Then the old man feels a hot wind blowing in from the east, cutting through the biting cold like a blade. It carries a man who is not a man. From high above, beyond naked sight, a great column of fire flares down from above. The heat feels alien to the old man's face, numbed after so many days of frost, but the feeling passes in an instant.

Etched with fire and into the frozen earth, is the burning question _WHERE?_

The old man looks up into the sky. Into the demigod's domain. A place beyond mortal ken, but one he has mastered all the same. "Jasmine Dragon," the old man murmurs, the words heavy in the newborn silence.

It is enough. The challenge is met. Where it began is where it will end.

**...**

"You c-c-can't honestly be pl-pl-planning to fight him," the servant protests. The old man can hear the sentiment bleed into her voice like a hemorrhaging artery.

"I am."

Emotion and expression are still awkward for her. She whispers when she wants to scream, she has to remind herself to smile when it is time to smile, and when she is worried for him, she stutters. The old man still doesn't know why. "Y-y-you still haven't f-f-fully r-r-recovered!"

"I know."

The old man straps on his breastplate. It is ugly and heavy, a grey that shines too brightly. It bears his sigil, and that alone is armor enough. "He'll still be weak from the battle at Yu Dao. Hopefully I'll keep him occupied enough from using his full power."

Even as he says it he knows it won't convince her. She is certain that her master walks to his doom, so certain that he would have a better chance of persuading her that the sun will not rise tomorrow as it has every other day. She will keep trying to dissuade him. Nothing she can say will stop him. They are alike in that, and in so much else. It speaks to the nature of their relationship over her decades of service. Two negatives clashing together to somehow form a positive.

"Three," the servant states. Her back is straight and her head held high. Her tone grows cold and clinical. The stutter shames her, but she soldiers on regardless.

"I know," he replies. Now the shoulderplates. They sit heavy on his frame, but he is willing to carry the burden. Always willing.

"I v-v-visited the univers-s-sity to make s-s-sure. The Th-th-three who f-f-fought Y-y-yangchen. O-o-only one w-w-was a nonb-b-bender. The records w-w-were v-v-very clear about that. O-o-one was an e-e-earthbender, one w-w-was a w-w-waterbender, a-a-and th-th-they were both m-m-masters. The f-f-fight l-l-lasted s-s-seven minutes, a-a-and only the e-e-earthbender survived."

"I know.."

"The n-n-nonbender w-w-was the f-f-first to die. D-d-didn't even l-l-last to the s-s-second minute. Y-y-yangchen j-j-just s-s-sucked the air o-o-out of his l-l-lungs. P-p-pulled them r-r-right out of h-h-his throat"

"I. Know." He puts on his gauntlets. The leggings are next. Then the boots. The black cape at his back. The black sword at his hip.

"Are you really so vain, so _arrogant_..." No stutter. No hesitation. The servant summons another ounce of that impossible strength, a titanic effort, all just to speak normally, "...to think you can actually do this?

She attacks him where he is most vulnerable. Where the blow still strikes deep. Plays to that weak part of him, that part that knows that to stand alongside gods does not make you one of them.

A dam breaks. "He'll kill you!" she gasps, as a desperate sob escapes her throat.

A moment of silence passes. The servant regrets her outburst. It hurts her to hurt him. It hurts her to see him so close to the edge of oblivion, hurt her so much that lashed out at him in anger. And although the hurt is so red and raw, the servant does not want to poison what they have left with such a base emotion as anger.

She does not want the old man to leave without saying goodbye.

The old man steps forward. While she knows he would never conceive of laying a hand on her, the servant's breath still quickens with fear. She has drawn the ire of a creature many times her greater, and she is to be reminded of it. She, a servant, and he, her master.

He embraces her. Her small frame is enveloped by his armored arms. The anger replaced by heartbreak. And although it still hurts her, to see him forced to pretend, it is a different kind of hurt, one she wants to remember. It is the first sign of spring after a long winter, the sun shining through the bitter chill.

"I know…" he whispers. Two words whispered, a thousand lives unlived, and one opportunity wasted.

The old man holds her tight and close. She is his center amidst the chaos, the last piece of flotsam for a drowning man to cling to in the freezing waters. All that was never said is at last laid bare beneath their feet. He is nothing without her. Nothing but black iron and a black sword.

The metal feels cold against her skin. The sharp edges press into her. The sword leans on her hip. The servant can't remember if there was ever a man beneath the armor. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that there is now warmth in a very cold place.

They hold each other tight against the storm. The servant could stay here forever, in this impossible instant. Where a man finally decides to live after a lifetime of death.

She knows it will end. As must all good things. Eternity is both real and a unreal, a concept beyond the grasp of understanding yet still just as true. The seed must grow, the tree must die.

Because in that moment, she understands.

The old man is the first to break away. Always the first. A spell is broken. Reality presses down with an iron heel. All good things. His voice grows hard again as he remembers his mission. His face is once more carved from the stone of his lair. "I can't imagine you're looking forward to your role in this," he says, mountains into dust, "But we all have our part to play."

"No, I won't," the servant replies, smoothing out the creases in her dress. She is once more impeccable. She is once more the ideal image of elegance. "But it is my task and mine alone."

The old man gives a curt nod. He walks to the table beside them, where his helmet sits alongside a fresh cup of tea. The old man lifts the helm to hold it in his hands. The helm he forged. He's worn it countless times before. He knows every edge and every line, every dent and every rough scrape not fully sanded down. The weight is as familiar to him the shorn cut of hair on his scalp.

Yet as he holds it, for some unfathomable reason, the helmet feels heavier.

It gapes at him. It is the maw that demands every inch of him, the hole in his heart that can never be filled. The old man stares into lenses of solid white, eyes of the predator. He sets it back on the table, reaching now for the fine porcelain.

He raises the small cup and drinks deep. It leaves a bitter aftertaste.

One hour.

The old man walks out of the cavern, with the visage of the wolfbat tucked in under his shoulder. "Goodbye, J.D." he says with his back to her, the farewell given almost as an afterthought. He uses a name given in a simpler time. A time of levity and victory, when the triumph was a _triumph_ and not just another prelude to greater loss.

A time when he used to smile.

The servant doesn't seem to notice the offense.

_Goodbye,_ the servant mouths, the word unsaid, her eyes beginning to well up. But she will not weep. It is against decorum, and old habits die hard.

A thousand lives unlived snuffed out like dying candles as he walks with the cold stone, each one brighter than the last. A life meant for the living, if only he could learn to let go.

The old man leaves everything behind. He doesn't look back.

**…**

"Boss, you gonna die tonight, or what?"

He pauses on the ladder. Five rungs up, and something makes him stop.

"Figure I will."

And now the girl knows he's gone crazy, because she could have sworn that the old man is smiling.

**...**

Night falls over emptied streets. The old man looks out from the spyglass, watching his target speeding towards him from over a mile away. He folds it, and begins to move into position. The pieces are now in play. All that is left to do is follow the game through to its conclusion.

For what might be the first time in years, the old man looks up to the sky. It is a full moon out tonight. The second full moon of summer, and it is snowing.

The old man stares at the silver disk for as long as his schedule can allow. The moon, his only ally through the long nights. Always lighting his way through the dark. Always heralding his coming. Surely it was meant to be. The moon above and her champion below. He never had a choice. This was decided long before he saw the wolfbat reflected across a thousand shards of glass. Long before her cold corpse turned to moondust in his hands, and a ghost's parting kiss...

The full moon calls to his iceborn blood. It strengthens him even without the gift of bending. His sight is clearer and his hearing keener. The aches and pains of an aging body seem just a little more distant. He can smell the salt of a frozen sea, feel the carved whalebone of a hunting spear, hear his chief roar the war chant of the tribes. The northerners feel closer to Tui and La at the full moon, but water is not his power. He is a son of the South, and he draws strength from the hunt.

Now, at the second full moon of summer, the old man is _more_.

In a foolish bit of sentimentality, the old man raises his hand. From here, the moon looks like it could fit into his palm. So close he can reach out and grab it. He doesn't just feel _her_ watching from above, he knows it as surely as the next sunrise.

So close he can almost touch her. One last time

_She's gone._

The old man clenches his outstretched palm into a fist. He grabs nothing but empty air. As if he expected anything different. _Hope in one hand..._

He asks the moon a question. He doesn't have the courage to voice it. He merely projects will and intent into the night sky. A cloud passes over in response, obscuring his patron and shadowing him in darkness.

What more answer is that?

The helm is in his hands. The maw. The hole. The empty space inside him, always taking what he can never afford to give.

The old man stares into the eyes of solid white. Eyes of a predator. He makes a choice.

The helmet slips easily over his skull, as it has a thousand times before. A low wind rolls over the empty streets, almost sounding like a moaning keen.

She weeps for the old man. She should not. This was meant to be.

Thirteen minutes.

**…**

An upheaval of earth throws the tank on its side as hands peel apart inches-wide armor as if opening a present.

Inside the war machine, that spits bombs and liquid fire, is a raven-haired girl with piercing green eyes, between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Her expression is one of terror, and her weapon is a wooden slingshot. She has a stone loaded and ready to fire.

"Isn't tonight a school nigh-"

His quip is interrupted by the perfect shot fired into his eye. It hangs in the air for a moment, before a single thought crushes it to dust.

"Ow!" The demigod rubs at his left eye. "That, young lady, was uncalled for."

"Your face is uncalled for!"

But then he feels it. Like how Toph taught him. A wave after a wave after a wave, a series of crests cascading through the earth until finally stopped by a body. Old, but not frail. Armored, but still mobile. A weathered stone on the coast, opposed to his leaf dancing in the autumn wind.

A grin breaks past his features. "Sokka!"

Gray skies and ashen snow and the somber air are broken just by how happily he shouts the name. Because with a swirl of orange robes and quick blast of air, it's just like old times. Friends are reunited, they are back at the Jasmine Dragon, and it is the end of a very long summer.

They stand together, eye to eye, almost the same height. The enthusiasm is infectious. Why resist it? The old man sighs, then gives a small smile. "Hey Aang."

"Hey buddy, feels like it's been forever. How are you?"

"I'm good Aang," As bold a lie as confusing ground for sky. "I'm good."

"How's the arm? Heard you hurt it a few weeks ago."

Hurt. One word. One word for the years of hunting and chasing, of running and killing, of two elemental opposites finally ending their enmity through a whirling storm of flashing steel and spraying blood. And the laughter. The laughter and the _snap_, and the burning skull still mocking him. How it still haunts him...

The old man rolls his arm. He winces slightly, "Better, and getting better every day. How's the family?" _How's my sister?_

"Great! Katara's been making a lot of progress. You should see her, sitting next to an open flame just like anyone else. We still can't leave the South, of course, but who knows? Maybe if I can get some of that spirit water from the Oasis, I mean, if it can bring back the dead, I'm sure it can do something about her condition…"

"That's good to hear…" the old man murmured, as if distracted.

"But I haven't even told you about the kids! Bumi graduated from the academy last month. We were worried that Katara would miss the ceremony, but then they decided to hold the ceremony down at the South Pole. You should have seen the look on his face when the headmaster pinned that little gold star to his chest. If he smiled any wider it woulda split his face wide open!"

"Aang…" the old man whispers. The Avatar doesn't seem to notice.

"Kya's still traveling. Might be nice of her to visit her folks a little more often, but I can respect her choice. I was like that at that age, always wanting to see the world. But she did manage to come down for the ceremony. She says she's been learning some bending from the Foggy Swamp tribe.."

"Aang…"

"And Tenzin! Oh, you have to see him Sokka. He's growing so fast, already at my knee, and I coulda sworn I saw him blow a breeze!"

"_Aang_."

A little more forcefully this time. Enough to snap the Avatar out of his recollection.

"You didn't come here to chat." the old man says, mountains into dust.

"No..." The Avatar dejectedly stares at his feet, as if he is little more than a wayward child being reprimanded. "I didn't."

The joy evaporates like rain on a boiling rock. Reality presses down with an iron boot. Friends reunite, but as enemies. They meet at the Jasmine Dragon, but it has long since been abandoned, its paint faded and its windows boarded up. It's the end of a very long summer, yet it is snowing.

'Why?" the monk asks. One word and a thousand questions behind it.

"Because you won't see."

Grey eyes grow hard as they meet solid white. Not the blazing light of transcendence, of one calling on the legion, but the formless blank slits of some automaton, of some feral animal devoid of sanity or spirit. Where has his friend gone? Where has the ponytail, the boomerang, the sarcasm, the stupid smirk, where has the Sokka he knew gone? When has the hair gone gray? When all the lines and scars been etched onto his face? What could have poisoned him into..._this_?

The Avatar still doesn't understand. He doesn't know just how far a man can fall, how much he can truly lose. Yue is dead. Suki is dead. Sokka is dead.

_I shall become a wolfbat_.

"I mean... Why does it have to be like this?" Aang whispers. _Why can't you give this up?_

"Because you won't _listen_." Mountains into dust. Sokka reaches for something.

The old man lifts a boxy device and levels it at his target. Something with too many gears and too many moving parts. Aang arches his brow as his friend pulls the trigger.

_Sound_. It blows out every window in a two block radius, then echoes for miles outward, far enough for even a mad king a hundred miles away to turn his head to the bow wave.

_Sound. _A weapon straight out of the mind of a madman, built to harness one of the few concepts not directly controlled by the elements.

_Sound._ Every sense and every thought, every square inch of him is nothing more than pure _sound_. He can feel every inch of him vibrating, his eardrums popping, his eyes going bloodshot. Even his pressure sight is thrown into chaos, structured lines and patterns devolving into . Aang can barely keep his eyes open. Feeling something leaking, he wipes at his nose to find the hand come back bloody.

With what little cognitive thought he can muster, Aang reaches out and crushes the weapon, the metal bending like paper in his grip.

The noise cuts out but the ringing in his ears doesn't, a thousand gongs going off in his head. A stomp of earth sends Sokka flying into the closest wall.

Aang doesn't give up. He floats over to Sokka, and extends a hand. His Air Nomad mentality wins through, believing peace is its own power.

"Sokka, listen to me. If you don't stop this, I won't have any choice but to..."

"_Choice?"_ Sokka spits the word out like a curse. He activates his electrogloves. Taking Aang's hand with lightning in his grip, Sokka presses both palms to Aang's forehead. Half of a city's newborn power grid is poured into the Avatar. The only thing keeping his brain from being cooked from the inside out is his firebending mastery.

The Avatar roars in pain, long and loud and raw and ragged. Lightning has always held a very painful spot in his memory. It reminds him he can be beaten.

**…**

A boy on the cusp of manhood. A girl held in his arms, both sharing a quiet kiss. The lovers. Both so young and so happy and so impossibly _alive_. She doesn't need to know the context, because she can see the joy in their eyes. A small note is scrawled at the bottom, _S+S at the Gardens._

The servant turns the page.

A man and his sister, an older and larger father hugging them both close. The family. All smiling. Blue eyes and brown hair. The sister only slightly resembling the father, probably the spitting image of her mother, although the servant couldn't say. Another note at the bottom, _Day after Solstice Festival, check out this thing the carnie called "photography"!_

The master never talked about any of them, although that might be because the servant never asked.

The servant turns the page.

A single rose, pressed deep into the page. It smells of old paper, of a dusty library, but it retains just a hint of its former fragrance. The note at the bottom: _Forever and always. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough._

Is that what this was all for? _I wasn't strong enough._

The servant closes the book.

The lights flicker. She checks the clock.

Ten minutes to midnight.

She drops the book. The servant gasps in pain as she grips at her heart. Her arm hangs limply at her side as the book drops to the floor. That will not stand. It is her job above all else to tend to the house, and she will not leave any corner untidy.

With uncertain fingers, the servant, the old woman, picks the book up with unsteady fingers. She replaces the album back on its shelf, running a hand across the spine for one last time, and finally lets go.

Darkness dances at the edges of her vision. _No...Not here...Not now_. Not when her master needs her most.

The servant limps to the doorway. She dons her coat as best she can, always a coat for winter weather, picks up her cane, and walks out the door. The manor is left in darkness.

Her job, at long last, is done. She has tended to her master's house.

**…**

"You're not a soldier of Ba Sing Se, you're not an agent of the Dai Li, you're not even a citizenof the Earth Kingdom!" Sokka shouts, struggling to be heard over his friend's screams. "You're the Avatar! Above men or kings or even gods. So tell me, since when did you start taking _orders_?"

Aang's eyes flash a blazing white as he calls on the strength of the legion. He redirects the arcing energy back into its source, burning out the power cells and leaving Sokka holding smoke instead of cold fire.

Sokka barely has time to react before a blow burning with orange fire drives him back into the wall. Aang calmly strides forward. "This isn't about me," he says, fire already pooling at his hands, "You've taken this thing too far and they won't stand for it anymore. If you won't, then someone has to put an end to it."

"You want to be that someone?" Sokka hoists himself up to his feet. "You want to be their little trained polardog? Fine." He waves both hands forward in a clear taunt. "Come on then, let me give you your _leash_."

Sokka thrusts out an arm, the motion flinging out a corded rope from his wrist, tipped with an iron weight. It lands with lethal precision, coiling tightly around the Avatar's throat, choking off his retort. Then, Sokka heaves.

"_Get over here." _Sokka roars, with a voice so full of fervor it borders on manic.

A man pulls a demigod to him. Sokka cocks his fist back, and with a strength that should be far beyond his years or his mundaneness, delivers a blow strong enough to shatter stone. The punch packs enough power behind it to drive the Avatar into the dirt.

Sokka doesn't relent. He drags Aang up to his feet, then with an open armored palm, drives him through the stone wall.

Aang's retort comes with in the form of a sweeping wave of fire.

**…**

The Dai Li swarm across the overturned tank. Metalbending still hasn't become a common enough practice to reach their ranks yet, so the best they can do is bend stone gauntlets and pry at the edges of the steel latch.

Slowly, inch by inch by grueling inch, they begin to force it open. Just when they're about to succeed…

With a harsh grating screech of gnashing gears, and a bellowing mechanical roar, the leviathan lurches to life.

**…**

A housewife looks up from her dishes.

A child looks up from her dolls.

A spooked ostrich horse bolts out of the stable door.

It seems like the entire Lower Ring can feel it, can feel the earth shaking and see the dust falling and the blows striking with the sound of thunder. A storm has come through the snow in the middle of summer, and everyone is caught by it.

Their fight tears through an elderly couple's apartment, their sleep interrupted by the walls tearing away and the man in black armor striking the monk in orange robes. The wife tries to maintain some semblance of decency, while her husband shoves her out of the way of their warpath.

Ducking under a blow aimed at his head, Aang tries to punch out a few fiery uppercuts. Sokka grabs his wrists, pointing the fire blasts away from him to burn the surrounding house, before delivering a crude headbutt.

Forced back a few steps, Aang rushes forward, taking hold of Sokka by his breastplate. The platinum-lined edges cut into his frozen hands as Aang hurls him through the far wall of the ratty tenement. Plumes of fire bloom at the Avatar's feet, jettisoning him forward to catch the falling Sokka mid-fall by his tattered black cape. All it takes is a quick spin for momentum, and Aang throws Sokka to the ground hard enough to shatter bone. It does just that.

Sokka rolls to the side, spitting up blood and what might be a tooth. He grimaces, bloody teeth shining in the moonlight. Clouds. Clouds and snow. It is summer, and it is _snowing_. He isn't done yet. He can feel the moon calling to his southern blood. He can feel the wolfbat smiling down upon him.

No regrets at the eleventh hour. This was meant to be.

Aang floats down on a sphere of air. "Stay down. You've put up a good fight, but it's over."

"Over? No…" Sokka gasps a wet cough escaping his throat, "No, Aang, it hasn't even _begun_."

"Please, Sokka! I know you can't take much more of this."

"Must be hard, huh?" Sokka mutters. Slowly, he forces himself to one knee. Suppresses the pain. Focuses it into a center, a white-hot point of burning agony sitting in his chest. Makes it easier to ignore. "Not having an easy way out. Not having a quick, painless, solution. Not having a lion turtle float up to you, carrying all the answers."

Then, he stands. Sokka lifts his head up, and looks Aang directly in the eye. "But that's what the real world is like Aang. It's messy. It's _hard_. There's no right answer. There's no black and white. There's just grey, a great big swirling mass of grey, where right and wrong are just _words_. And that's what I've dealt with, while you went on with your life. I've been dealing with the real world."

Aang's expression changes to a mixture of anger and pity. Still just trying to understand. "You've fought with mad tyrants. I've hunted criminals," Sokka continued. "You've dealt with rogue spirits. I've dealt with pimps beating on their whores. And still, I've seen things, seen such horrors and monsters and _madness_ in this city that are beyond even your worst nightmares. This is my world Aang. The world the monks hid from you. The world that, even when involved in a worldwide war, you got the barest _glimpse_ of."

"Sokka, I just broke three of your ribs." There were tears brimming in Aang's eyes. The weight of the choice was threatening to tear his soul in half.

Sokka doesn't seem to hear him. "You can't take away my bending. You can't take away my freedom, because if you imprison me, even if you break every bone in my body I swear to you, on the spirits and the moon and _Suki's unmarked grave_, that I'll be free within the week. The only thing you can take from me, the only thing that will end this, is my life," Sokka dropped into a fighting stance, fists held at the ready. "Welcome to the real world, Aang. _What are you going to do?_"

Three minutes.

**…**

The Dai Li agent stands on the roof's edge, observing the clash below. Even through all his training, the inbred stoic demeanor of the Upper Ring, when he sees the man in dark drive the Avatar to the ground, he allows himself a small gasp of unmitigated awe.

Fighting the Avatar was like fighting a force of nature. It simply couldn't be done. Only the most powerful benders in history had ever stood a chance, and even that number is vanishingly small.

Yet here is a man. A mundane, bendless, _man_, and he is fighting the Avatar. But no only is he fighting the Avatar, he is holding his own.

But, orders are orders. The Avatar is no longer needed to contain the situation, and should it be allowed to develop, their battle could level a sizeable portion of the Lower Ring. The agent already has a stone gauntlet prepared, ready to throw and strike the man in dark at the base of the temple.

The agent hears something land behind him. He lowers his arm, then turns his head hidden beneath the wide-brimmed hat.

He barely has time to shout before a leather gloved fist collides with his jaw and drives him over the roof's edge.

The archer keeps running across the rooftops without breaking stride.

**…**

Sokka palms something from his belt and hurls it forward. Aang drops to the ground, melts the snow around him, and catches the viscous substance in a globe of water. He barely has time to shove it away before Sokka thumbs the detonator. The blasting jelly explodes, the shockwave hurling both away to opposite ends of the street.

Pain. Blinding. Numbing. Agony and ecstasy, swirling together until they become some horrifying new sensation.

Aang stumbles to his feet, shaking his head clear of the ringing. The first thing he sees is an old man charging into him.

They slam into the stone building. Sokka strikes him in the stomach, driving the wind out of an airbender's lungs, before bringing Aang's face down onto his knee. Sokka moves to hit him again, but the fist is caught by a hand like iron, belonging to a face with blazing white eyes.

"**ENOUGH!**" Aang shouts with a thousand beside him, forced to dive into the Avatar State to save himself. He grips Sokka's helmet hard enough to bend the steel inwards, then sends the old man flying back with a strike to the solar plexus. Aang is still holding the faceplate. He crushes it with one hand like paper.

This time there is no gentle floating down from air. The Avatar melts the snow around him into a tidal wave, surging forward and carrying Sokka with him. With a twisting of his arms in a spiral pattern, the water is forced up into a single column a dozen feet high, then snap frozen into a pillar of ice. Trapped at the summit is Sokka, a handprint carved into his breastplate like the impression of a hand pressed into wet clay.

One minute.

_Get ready._

**…**

His leg still burns with the force of searing hellfire. The arrow broke when he fell, the shaft snapping off and forcing the arrowhead deeper into the flesh. The pain is almost enough to throw him off his game. Almost.

If the archer allowed himself a moment to think, he might realize the irony of the situation. Him, chased by earthbenders, helping to take down the Avatar, and the entire plan could be undone by an _arrow_. It's just so goddamned hilarious it could force him to laugh.

The archer doesn't laugh. Not when he's bleeding.

Agents are closing in. He can hear them sliding across the roof tiles. They're swarming around him. Better now than never.

He hangs from the balcony from nothing but his legs, gripping the bow once slung across his back. The archer knocks the one arrow in his quiver, draws the string back with his teeth, and sights the target.

One breath.

Exhale.

Second breath.

Exhale.

Third breath.

And then he can see them. See the old man frozen in ice, with the Avatar, the blood-cursed Oma-damned _backstabber_, hovering beside him, so secure in his victory. If only the archer could see his face…

One shot. The one shot that ever really mattered.

Exhale.

The arrow sings with its release.

**...**

Cold. It is snowing. It is summer, and it is snowing. Ice. Cold. Darkness. _Forever and always._ Not yet. Sokka flexes with the last reserves of his strength, every muscle in his upper body screaming in protest, before he frees his torso from the makeshift prison. _I wasn't strong enough_.

Aang tries to bend more water back up. Sokka hurls a reddish power at his eyes, It blinds him for a moment, for just one moment, harsh and stinging and reducing the world to a shapeless blur, before Aang blows it out from tearing eyes with a gust of air. For the first time, the Avatar looks angry.

The pillar of ice collapses back into water, dropping Sokka to the ground. Aang carves out a boulder from the earth and hurls it at him. No time to dodge it. Sokka draws his sword for the first and only time. He cleaves the flying stone, starmetal parting mundane minerals. Two perfect halves fall beside him. Echoing through the chill winter air is a pure note of perfect vibration.

But starmetal is not as immune to shaping as platinum. The blade loses its solidity, twisting and flowing with the consistency of rubber until Aang literally _bends_ into a perfect curve. Sokka drops the ruined sword, the last thing anchoring him to his life before the wolfbat, before Aang drives him back with a javelin of earth. Sokka hits the street with another sickening _crunch_. He crawls to all fours, as the Avatar calmly walks to him.

"It's over, Sokka." Aang says with a finality that even chills himself to the bone.

Sokka laughs, or sobs, maybe even both. "Were it that easy."

An arrow flies through the night. Aang can sense it the moment it was loosed. Air is his natural element, and combined with his knowledge of pressure sense, Aang can feel the ripples in the wind as easily as footsteps on stone. It flies faster than the eye can follow. Aang can catch it like a falling leaf. It seems like for the first time, Sokka has underestimated him.

Now.

Aang catches the arrow. Though instead of an arrowhead, the arrow is tipped with a glass tube filled with some strange glowing substance. It explodes on contact, throwing a greenish powder into his face and down his throat.

He is blind. He is deaf. He is mute. Every sense blurry, discordant. His mind shattering into so many pieces. He can't breathe. He can't remember how to breathe. Aang can't feel the stone at his feet. The water won't move with him. The fire inside is guttering, dying. Even the air grows heavy and choking.

It isn't painful. Quite the opposite. It is the absence of pain. The absence of everything. It's too much. So much silence. The Avatar collapses, his strength gone with his memory of strength. He isn't aware of much. All just a blur. Blacks and whites becoming greys. No names and no faces. Katara...Kya...Bumi...Tenzin, blowing a _breeze_.

For the first time, the chorus has fallen silent. It's like dying, like a piece of him dying, like he can see the true corpus of the Avatar, but only from a distance…

He is Aang of the Air Nomads, and nothing else.

"_Shade Dust_," something murmurs. Muted. So very far away. "_Developed by the White Lotus to contain a rogue Avatar. Cuts off all access to the Spirit World, separates the host from the Avatar Spirit. Blocks any bending. Not easy to find. One of their closest secrets. Took a lifetime and a fortune to uncover it. Luckily I had both…"_

Something comes into focus. A man…

The words come slowly to his deaf ears, mostly because Aang has to both remember how to speak, how to listen. But they do come. They come, along the image of an old man in battered armor, a handprint carved into his chest. His cape is tattered and torn, his face carved from the stone itself.

"Now you know...how it feels…what the rest of us...live with every day…the earth motionless...the water tasteless...the fire dangerous...the air..._lifeless_."

Some small measure of speech rises to Aang's throat. "_So...dead…_" he manages to gasp with a throat turned to stone. His face frozen in an expression of pure, primal fear. He has never been so terrified, not even when the lightning crashed into his spine.

"_Temporary...but long enough. Long enough to leave you vulnerable…"_

Aang sees his friend with the small amount of bloodsight still left to him. He looks past the dark armor with the sharp edges, looks down to the bone and blood beneath, turning a man into a cross section. The vital fluids, so much water pumping through such a tangled web of circulation. At the center lies a red pulsing heart, not blackened with hatred or spite. Just red, like all the rest. Twitching erratically as the beats fall into uneven patterns.

A name. He remembers a name. His friend's name. "Sokka…" Aang just barely lifts his head, now weighing a mountain. "Your heart…"

Sokka ignores him, hits him, strikes him, one punch enough to drive Aang back down to the cold earth.

Red sprays out onto white.

**…**

So many agents, and so very close. They won't bother bringing the archer in alive. There was an unseen agreement between him and the established order, an unspoken truce where he would be allowed to cause as much mayhem as he liked, so long as it never caused any lasting damage.

But now he's complicit in one of the most daring plans in history. He didn't just break the truce, he openly defied it. He helped kill the Avatar. No, this time the Dai Li won't bother capturing him. Instead they'll aim those stone gauntlets for his throat, and with a closed fist snap his neck in an instant.

The archer closes his eyes. He tries to gain some measure of acceptance of the end. But does he even deserve such a painless death?

His inward surrender is interrupted by the wall beneath him exploding. A tank, a genuine Fire Nation Salamander tank, rolls through the apartment and pulls to a stop directly under him.

From the open hatch, he can see a raven-haired girl waving at him. "Down here, Tall, Dark, and Bitter." she shouts.

Cocking an eyebrow and throwing his reservations to the wind, the archer drops down from the balcony and onto the tank's iron shell. Stone fists rain down around him. He doesn't waste any time in climbing in. This must be the protege.

The archer nods in wordless thanks. The girl sardonically rolls her eyes. He hands her a note procured from his jacket.

Her eyes quickly scan the length of the page. She grins, a wild and manic thing, before taking the wheel again and plowing through the Dai Li blockade.

_Sorry you had to find out this way Sparrowhawk, but I couldn't take the risk of him listening in. Now here's the plan._

**...**

"We could have done it Aang," Sokka whispers to the wind. Aang just stares vacantly upward, his chest heaving with the simple act of forcing air into his lungs. "We could have changed the world. Now look at us. Me, a sad, pathetic old man who can't learn to let go. And you...just another soldier in their _war_."

Sokka drags Aang up to eye level. Both are battered and beaten to the point of being broken. But not yet. Not yet.

"I want you to remember this, Aang," His voice hardens. Mountains into dust, for what might be the last time. "More than Yakone's claws, more than Azula's lightning, more than Ozai's fire burning under beneath a red sky. More than anything..." Sokka draws a small dagger, with an inscription running along the blade. _Never give up without a fight._

He levels the point at Aang's exposed neck. "I want you to remember my blade at your throat. Even after you're dead and buried, I want you and all the lives you've lived and yet to live, I want the Avatar Spirit _itself_, to remember the one man who _beat you_."

Sokka stops, his last breath spent. He falls, for the last time.

It's over.

Aang hobbles to his friend. He holds the body close, already cold from the freezing ice, and weeps.

A circle of Dai Li gathers around them both. They move closer…

"**DON'T YOU TOUCH HIM!**" The Avatar screams, with the fury of one and the power of one thousand. The agents back off, albeit reluctantly.

Snow falls. It is summer, and it is snowing.

It's over.

**…**

The manor burns. The bed burns. The bedroom burns. The books burn. The library burns. The album burns, with the red rose inside it. The words, unread, go up in fire and end as ash. _Forever and always._

The servant watches it all, her eyes dry. No pain, no anger, no sorrow. She simply stares distantly as the roof collapses and the fire spreads. Nothing but what she could guess to be...solipsism.

She gasps, clutching her forehead. And wordlessly, the servant falls to the ground and lies still. Her duty is done, and so is she.

_I wasn't strong enough._

The manor burns, orange fires against white snow.

**…**

As funerals went, the turnout was rather pathetic. Just under a dozen, and half that number were legal counsel waiting to read out the contents of the will, and sycophantic board members trying to improve their public image.

If he were around to see it, he might have laughed. Even with all his wealth, even with all his secrets come to light for the entire world to see, just under a dozen people attend the funeral of the Wolfbatman. A dozen people honor the sacrifice of a man who's saved every life in Ba Sing Se a dozen times over.

It's held on a small hill still covered in snow, a few miles outside the city walls. The headstone is little more than a rectangle of carved stone, no epigraph written, no date given, only the name SOKKA, and beneath it, SON OF HAKODA.

Toph doesn't come. Zuko doesn't come. Katara can't come. That unbreakable fellowship was broken a long time ago. So the only one standing on the small hill, the only one who still remembers him, who still cares, is Aang. He hasn't changed since the fight in the Lower Ring, still doffing the same torn orange and yellow robes. The other visitors keep their distance from him, unsure if they should thank him or curse him.

The last speaker finishes a long and tiring speech about inspiration, legacy, and a better place. Even without pressure sense, Aang knows every word out of his mouth is a lie. Sokka probably never even met him.

"Hard to believe he's actually dead."

Aang turns to the woman behind him. A woman who looks remarkably familiar, even past the veil and through the withering effects of time…"Ty Lee?"

She gives a small, sad smile. "Also dead, although that's a bit of a longer story that ended badly. Abusive relationships always do, I suppose." The not-Ty Lee throws back her veil, exposing a face once beautiful but now sagging with age. She extends a hand. "Selina."

"Not like any name I've ever heard of."

Her face screwed up in a mockery of pensive thought. "Well, gee, guess I just like standing out from the crowd."

Selina, if that is her real name, looks to the gravestone. The other visitors begin to filter out. The playful spark in her eyes gutters out like a cooling ember. Her tone grows serious. "You were with him, at the end?"

"Yeah."

"Good. No one deserves to die alone." She draws her veil back up and pulls her jacket tightly to her. "Codgy old bastard deserved that much…" Selina mutters, before she strides off into the cold.

Then it's just Aang, and the man he buried. He bites back an apology, knows Sokka would have thought it stupid and sentimental. Instead, all he can do is bow in respect. He draws a dagger from the folds of his robes, the only weapon he's ever carried, and lays it on the grave.

He walks away, in a final, wordless farewell.

Only…

He's not alone…

There's a girl standing at the grave, swathed in enough black to pass of as a Si Wongi sandbender. Normally Aang would dismiss her, chalk it up her up as another devoted follower, but something gives him pause.

_Thump._

Her piercing green eyes…

_Thump..._

The way she stares at the grave. She doesn't even acknowledge Aang, and while he's no egotist, he is still the Avatar, one of the most noteworthy individuals on the planet. For someone to ignore him so deliberately…

_Thump thump..._

The girl's heart is racing. Aang can feel the sweat pooling at her brow.

Her eyes break away for just a moment. An expression of terror and anticipation, and maybe just a hint of begging. It's only now that Aang realizes, as he was walking away, that sound echoing in the background. He's heard it for the entire funeral, felt it pulsing up from the earth below, but he it's only now that he actually _listens_.

_Thump thump…_

Buried beneath the soil, is something like a heartbeat.

He makes a choice. This was meant to be.

Aang looks the girl dead in the eyes. Stares at the girl with piercing green eyes, with raven-black hair, and _winks_.

He walks away and never looks back. For the first time in a long time, Aang is smiling.

**…**

In the Undercity of Ba Sing Se, in the ruins of a forgotten dark age, they gather. Led by the light of the glowing crystals of the Zutara Caverns, they gather.

Soldiers and stableboys, gangsters and shopkeepers, firebenders, earthbenders, even waterbenders from the opposite ends of the earth, flooding in from above. They pour in by the dozens upon dozens peaking at two hundred and still growing. No two are alike, each a different age, ethnicity, gender and mindset. But they are all united in purpose. They are all looking for that shining city, a city of ivory towers, white trees, smiling faces, and streets paved with gold.

They are all looking for a better world. Each bears a mark upon their brow. The sigil of their patron, a crude silhouette of a wolfbat. Some have burned it in with charcoal, others with common house paint, many even wearing it as a tattoo. No two are alike, but they are united in purpose. They all bear the sigil of a better world brought by _force_.

"Good, you're all here." speaks the thundering voice behind them, like mountains being ground into dust. To his left stands the one-armed archer, and to his right stands a young girl trying to act ten times her size. "Now we can begin."

The crowd parts before him. They regard him with a holy status, because in their eyes he is far more than a man. He is the Wolfbatman, he who fought the Avatar, won, died, and came back all the same.

The old man kneels, and the rest kneel with him. "This is where I will teach you all of my ways, all of my secrets. In time you will protect Ba Sing Se as I did, one army in place of one man. This time they will not stop us, because they _cannot _stop us." He rises to his feet, the others following his example. "Now do what I and Sparrowhawk say, and get to work."

He's answered by a chorus of _Yes, sir_ and _You got it, boss_. It's still a strange feeling. For a loner to become a leader. But he'll get used to it, in time. That's all he has now, all the time in the world.

"This good, boss?" asks Sparrowhawk, always at his side.

They begin digging trenches. They begin building ramps. They begin taking stock of weaponry. They begin building the basic infrastructure of a training facility. Everywhere and all at once, it _begins_.

The old man watches over it all. He watches something much bigger than himself begin to take shape, something that can make a difference.

For the first time in twenty years, Sokka smiles.

"Good enough."

**…**

**Mountains Into Dust**

**OR**

**The Wolfbatman Returns**

* * *

AN: Have a fun fact. Bruce Greenwood voiced Batman in Under the Red Hood and Young Justice, while Peter Weller voiced Batman in the film adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns, both of whom appeared in Star Trek Into Darkness! See, isn't IMDB just _fascinating_?

Ahem, anyway, on with the ramblings. One shots are still hard for me, mostly because I'm not sure if the present tense sounds better. So yes, another Batman fusion. What can I say, some people have their comfort zones.

This was less obviously inspired by the Wolfbatman group on Deviantart (although I do disagree with some of their ideas, e.g. Katara as Miss Freeze) and more obviously by The Dark Knight Returns. So yeah, this has been eating at me for a while. I set out to write a quick one shot to take a breather from _Archangel_, and ended up writing a nine thousand word behemoth that I've continually torn down and raised up again over a period of weeks. Hope you all enjoyed it; leave a review if you did and a review if you didn't, I don't really care so long as it's worthwhile feedback. I'll try to crank out the next chapter of _Archangel_ as fast as I can.

...

Still not solid on that title. Sounds like a cribbed line from a teenage angsty love poem. _Snow in Summer_ was my second choice, but might not have fit thematically.


End file.
